Payton Henson and Cameron Reynolds are getting their welcome to college basketball moment right now. The Tulane men’s basketball freshmen, who both found their shooting strokes in Saturday’s Conference USA victory over Rice, are packing their bags along with the team and heading on a brutal three-game road trip.

It begins with East Carolina (11-7, 0-3 in C-USA) on Thursday. Then the Green Wave (10-9, 2-2 in C-USA) head to Old Dominion – a new league foe – for Saturday’s 6 p.m. game before wrapping with a visit to Southern Mississippi on Feb. 1.

“I’ve been to places but I’ve never traveled this much and so quickly,” Henson said. “So we’re in one place one day and the next day we’re in a completely different city.”

Henson, who scored eight points against Rice, including a 2-for-5 showing from beyond the arc, said he is learning how to adjust to this part of college basketball on the fly.

“I’m still trying to figure it out. I try to get a 30-minute nap each day just to get some energy. I find that very helpful,” Henson said.

Reynolds also came off the bench with some zing against Rice. He also scored eight, making 2-of-4 3-pointers. He added four rebounds to the team’s tally of 39.

“The toughest part is after the game, going into the Saturday game, driving on the bus and then getting there late and the next morning, going to practice the next day and then having a game the following day,” Reynolds said. “That’s really the toughest part on your body, is just trying to get rest.”

At least the duo has its youth – and a developing ability to sustain the starting backcourt’s energy.

“(Tulane coach Ed Conroy) tells us all the time because once the first group gets out and you go the bench, we have to keep the tempo up that Lou (Dabney) and Jonathan (Stark) and Jay (Hook) have brought to the game already,” Reynolds said. “For me, I have to keep the aggressiveness that they already have to the game and then I got to keep the team going so whenever they get back in the game, they don’t miss beat and I don’t miss a beat.”

Hook, a starting shooting guard, set the tone in the Rice game, making his first trey in league play and then adding three more (4-for-7 from beyond the arc).

“It was real fun,” Reynolds said. “We haven’t had a game like that where everyone has just been clicking like that. So it was real fun, especially for me and Payton.”

Henson had struggled shooting-wise before the Rice game. He was 4-for-26 on 3-pointers before the Rice game.

“He's had some great moments this year and had some good practices lately and hopefully his confidence is back where he can just be really, really aggressive,” Conroy said. “We saw a little bit of a carryover from that game into practice yesterday. We need him to be aggressive and play with a lot of confidence. If he can start knocking down that shot and getting some boards for us, that would be a big boost.”

Conroy has emphasized to the entire team that the rookies need to hit baskets for the team to be successful. Henson has processed the message.

“Me and Cam, we are definitely team players as well as the rest of the team and we’re just going to do whatever it takes to win – whether it’s coming in and making shots like we did in that last game, then that's what we're going to be doing,” Henson said.

Conroy said the squad is fully aware it must lean on youngsters.

“He understands that we're behind him,” Conroy said of Henson. “His teammates want him to shoot the ball because we see what he does on a daily basis.”

But a big challenge in Greenville on Thursday will come for the Tulane players when they don’t have the ball. The Pirates shoot 46.5 percent from the floor (Tulane hits on just 41.5 percent of its shots) and scores 81.6 points a game. Tulane averages just 66.8 points.

“They have a really good guard who can shoot the ball,” Reynolds said referring to senior guard Akeem Richmond, who averages 19.1 points a game. “We just expect to limit him on his 3’s. We have been working on defense hard and it showed up in the Rice game. We held them to a season-low and everything.... We have to have defense to generate offense. We have to have energy on the defensive side. We can’t come out not focused on the defensive side. That’s really one of our big things is just to work on defense.”

The turnaround to Old Dominion hangs in the balance then, too. It’s a change for even the older guys on the team. Last season, conference games were on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The Thursday-Saturday format changes their academic responsibilities, too.

“(Last year) we would be able to go to class, sometimes we would come back late -- but now we’re just totally missing the end of the week so I think it’s a little better because if we have away games at the end of the week, we just come in on Sunday and get the whole week back," Hook said. "But it’s a little tough.”

Henson, Reynolds and the other freshmen are just figuring out how to balance books on the bus and plane trip for the first time. The semester just began – and Henson said he is pretty sure what his hardest course will be.

“I’m thinking it’s going to end up being psychology. The lectures are really important in that class and I’ll be missing a couple of those. … I’ll be reading on the bus a lot,” he said.

On the court, the challenges are more familiar.

“Really, I challenged our guys from the minute the Rice game ended to do what we need to focus and come out and show some consistency now as far as playing the game the way we want to play it,” Conroy said. “So I’m looking forward to see how they respond on Thursday night and how we come out and approach that game and obviously we’re looking for a better effort on our weekday games.

"And then we go to Old Dominion – a team we haven’t played since I’ve been here but a program I’m very familiar with. I’ve played there many times over the years. They have a very proud program and the last 10 years they’ve been really, really good.”